After the War
by Iscreamer1
Summary: Sequel to "Snoopy vs the Red Baron". Charlie Brown shares the story of his life to one of the world's most notable video game designers.
1. The Remaints

_Charles Brown, just 13 years old on July 24, 1914, boarded the legendary Orient Express with the upper-class Prince Kronos and his African secretary Kahina, including his younger sister and his fiancée, Lucille van Pelt. Charlie clearly did not feel much for Lucille, but his sister pushed for the marriage for financial security, to maintain their current lavish lifestyle and bolster their social cachet among the Turkish elite. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Heather Dawson won third-class tickets to the train in a poker game._

_Charlie was so unhappy about his forced engagement, as well as his endlessly shallow life, that he attempted to kill himself by jumping off the rear platform of the rear sleeping car. Heather saw him and intervened to prevent his suicide. Charlie's company found the two and Lucille invited Heather to dine with their party the following evening in the restaurant car as a thank you, however she meant it more as entertainment than as an actual thank you. In the meantime, Charlie and Heather strike up a tentative friendship as she shared tales of her adventures in traveling and she expressed her own hopes, and she shows him her sketchbook of artwork. Their bond deepened when they later ditched the first-class formal dinner party for a much livelier gathering in Salzburg, Austria._

_Heather was clearly falling in love with Charlie, but Charlie was inclined to ignore their growing affection because of his engagement and their different social standings. He tried to convince Heather, and himself, that he is in love with Lucy. But eventually he decided to throw caution to the wind and offer his heart to Heather. He met Heather, saying he changed his mind, and he stepped up on the entrance to the Vienna Westbahnhof. Heather took his two hands and raised them so he is standing with his arms outstretched. "I'm flying!" He said, and they kissed. They returned laughing to Kronos' palace, and Charlie asked Heather to sketch him wearing a kimono with the Firebird in his hand. Lucy found the picture and sent Schroeder to find Charlie and Heather. The two ran away, holding each other and laughing, down to the bottom of the train into a baggage hold, where they renewed their relationship in the seat of a compartment in the forward baggage car._

_In the meantime, arms dealer August Schmidt had been seemingly ignoring the fact that his merchandise was being armed by a quartet of Serbian terrorists, and the Orient Express maintained the high speed suggested by his colleague Tyler Whitney even as the train headed into the night. On the night of July 26, 1914, two of the Serbs saw the Budapest Keleti station directly in the train's path. Despite the many efforts of the crew and engineers, their leader Milos hijacked the locomotive, speeding the train past the Hungarian vicinity and causing major countries to begin an unstoppable descent to war._

_Lucille discovered the relationship between Heather and Charlie and gets even by framing Heather for stealing her scarab whistle. Heather was locked away in the rear baggage car, and Charlie wasn't totally sure whether she actually stole it or not. Charlie and his family were asked to be locked into the restaurant car, but Charlie refused and ran away to find Heather. They almost died because of the growing amount of artillery in the surrounding countries, but they made it out when he freed her with a knife. They tried desperately to make their way back to Serbia through the borders to escape the rapidly violent war. They found many obstacles, including locked gates that are used to keep foreigners from reaching the outskirts to safety, as well as Lucille's violent temper that forces them back to the forests. They finally made their way to the skies with the help of Charlie's pet beagle Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel, but the war had raged out and they, along with hundreds of fighter planes, had no choice but to try to stay on the air for as long as possible as to defeat the enemy commander, The Red Baron. The dogfight went higher and higher until there was enough damage to cause a railway bridge to collapse, before the two planes finally went under at 2:20 a.m. on July 28._

_Charlie and Heather stick together and waited with the hundreds of fallen pilots thrashing helplessly in the river of the Grdelica Gorge, shouting desperately for those in someone to come and rescue them. Charlie almost thought that he would die, but Heather told him that he will "die an old man, warm in your bed, not here, not tonight." He tells her to never let go of that promise. By the time a Turkish boat decides to row back and help those in need, almost all of the aviators have died of hypothermia, wounds, malnutrition and diseases. Charlie was heartbroken to realize that Heather had succumbed, as well. He bids her goodbye, telling her that he will never let go as he watched her corpse sink underwater, then managed to get the boat's attention to come back and rescue him. The survivors in the train wait for hours until they arrived at Constantinople's Sirkeci Station. Upon arrival in Istanbul, Charlie found a familiar object in Lucille's coat pocket…_

* * *

Blackness. Then two faint lights appeared, close together, growing brighter. They resolved into two deep submersibles, rising like express elevators. One was ahead of the other, looking like a spacecraft blazing with lights, bristling with insectile manipulators. It lifted away into the limitless light above. Soon they were fireflies, then stars. Then gone.

Inside the first submersible, Mir One, was a cramped seven-foot sphere, crammed with equipment. Jacques Cousteau, the submersible's pilot, sat hunched over his controls, singing softly in French.

Next to him on one side was Jordan Mechner. He was thirty, lightly tanned, and liked to wear his Nomex suit to show off. He was a wily, fast-talking video game designer, a computer superstar who was part historian, part adventurer, and part vacuum cleaner salesman. At that moment, he was propped against the CO2 scrubber, fast asleep and snoring.

On the other side, crammed into the remaining space, was a bearded wide-body named Mark Moran, who was also asleep. Mark was a producer and a Remotely Operated Vehicle pilot and the resident WW1 expert.

Jacques glanced at the bottom sonar and made a ballast adjustment.

The bottom of the river was a pale, dead-flat lunar landscape. It got brighter, lit from above, as Mir One arrived from to the sea floor in a down blast from its thrusters. It had hit bottom after a two-hour free-fall with a loud bonk.

Mechner and Moran jerked awake at the landing.

Jacques spoke in his heavy French accent. "We are here."

Minutes later, the two submersibles were docked on the surface to the sound of side scan sonar and the thrum of big thrusters.

The featureless green clay of the flora and fauna unrolled in the daytime. Moran was watching the side scan sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object was visible. Jacques lay prone, driving the submersible, his face pressed to the center port.

Moran tried to direct him. "Come left a little. It's right in front of us, eighteen meters. Fifteen. Thirteen...you should see it."

Jacques was growing tired of Moran's attitude. "Do you see it? I don't see it...there!"

Out of the sky, like a ghostly apparition, a viaduct appeared. Its knife-edge prow was coming straight at them, seeming to drop on them and create ocean waves. It towered above the river, standing just as it landed eighty years before.

The bridge of the Grdelica Gorge. Or what was left of it. The men went up the hill and over the rails, intact except for an overgrowth of rust draping it like stains.

Jordan Mechner's face filled the black and white frame of a video camcorder. "It still gets me every time."

He turned the camera to the front, looking over Jacques's shoulder, to the rails visible in the lights of the sun. Jacques turned. "Is just your guilt because of stealing from the dead."

Jordan turned the camera in his hand so it pointed at his own face. "Thanks, Jacques. Work with me, here."

Jordan resumed his serious, pensive gaze out the front port, with the camera aimed at himself at arm's length. "It still gets me every time...to see the site of a great war of sitting here, where many planes fought for each other in the morning, July 28, 1914, after a long fall from the sky above."

Jacques rolled his eyes and muttered in French. Moran, who had been watching the sonar, snorted with laughter. "You are so full of it, boss."

* * *

In the Aegean Sea, Mir Two drove aft down the starboard side of an overturned shipwreck, past the huge anchor, while Mir One passed over the seemingly endless forecastle deck, with its massive anchor chains still laid out in two neat rows, its bronze windlass caps gleaming. The twenty-two foot long submersibles were like white bugs next to the enormous wreck.

Mechner turned the camera back toward the window. "Place of interest nine. Here we are on the hull of Britannic...400 feet down. The pressure is three tons per square inch, enough to crush us like a freight train going over an ant if our hull fails. These windows are nine inches thick and if they go, it's sayonara in two microseconds."

Mir Two landed on the boat deck, next to the ruins of the bridge. A ghostly echo seemed to surround the submersible—people shouting and screaming, a mine exploding in the background. The occupants of Mir Two suppressed a shudder.

Mir One landed on the hull of the deckhouse nearby.

Mechner turned the camera off. "Right. Enough of that bullshit. Let's go to work."

Moran slipped on a pair of 3D electronic goggles, and grabbed the joystick controls of the ROV.

Outside the submersible, the ROV, a small orange and black robot called Snoop Dog, lifted from its cradle and flew forward.

Moran grinned as he manipulated the controls. "Walking the dog."

Snoop Dog drove itself away from the submersible, paying out its umbilical behind it like a robot yo-yo. Its twin stereo-video cameras swiveled like insect eyes. The ROV descended through an open shaft that once was a staircase.

Snoop Dog went down several tracks, then moved laterally into a reception room.

Snoop Dog moved through the cavernous interior. The remains of the ornate hand-carved woodwork, which gave the ship its elegance, moved through the floodlights, the lines blurred by slow dissolution and descending algae formations. Stalactites of rust hung down so that at times it looked like a natural grotto, then the scene shifted and the lines of a ghostly undersea mansion could be seen again. Snoop Dog passed ghostly images of Britannic's opulence.

A tool box for nurses, in amazingly good shape, lay crashed on its side against a wall. The tools gleamed black and white in the lights.

A bulb, still hanging from the ceiling by its wire, glinted as Snoop Dog moved around it.

Its lights played across the floor, revealing a champagne bottle, then some White Star Line china, then a woman's high-top granny shoe. Then something eerie: what looked like a child's skull resolved into the porcelain head of a doll.

* * *

In a train yard in Greece, a real dog entered an abandoned CIWL sleeping car, which was much better preserved. Here and there a door still hung on its rusted hinges. An ornate piece of teak and a wall of light bulbs hinted at the grandeur of the past.

The men turned and went through a black doorway, entering Compartment I, the sitting room of single couch, one of the most luxurious compartments on the Orient Express.

Moran spoke up. "I'm in the sitting room. Heading for Compartment F."

Mechner nodded, then warned, "Stay off the bed. Don't stir it up like you did yesterday."

Moran snapped back. "I'm trying, boss."

The brass fixtures of the near-perfectly preserved window glinted in the sun. A fly crawled over the hearth. Nearby were the remains of a luggage rack and a writing desk. The dog crossed the ruins of the once elegant room toward another door. It squeezed through the doorframe, scraping rust and wood chunks loose on both sides. It moved out of a cloud of rust and kept on going.

Moran was watching closely. "I'm crossing the bedroom."

The remains of a foldout bed were visible in the light. Mechner grinned. "That's Van Pelt's bed. That's where the bitch slept."

Moran smirked. Stripped wall panels and a coathanger moved through the light. Through the dusty wall of the bathroom, the porcelain cups and sink looked almost new, gleaming in the sun.

Moran grinned. "Uh-oh. Looks like someone left the water running."

Mechner had noticed something. "Come back over here. I want to see what's under that couch."

Moran moved the bloodhound back. "You smelling something, boy?"

The bloodhound deployed its nose and started moving dust aside. A lamp was lifted, its ceramic colors as bright as they were in 1914.

Mechner was tense, watching. "Easy, Mark. Take it slow. It might come apart."

The bloodhound gripped an object under the couch, lying at an angle in a corner, and pulled it out. It moved reluctantly in a cloud of silt. The dark object was wooden box. The silt cleared and the bloodhound's eyes showed them what was under the sofa.

Moran was excited. "Oh, baby, baby, are you seeing this, boss?"

Mechner was watching his eyes with a rapt expression. It was like he was seeing the Holy Grail. "It's payday, boys."

In the glare of the sun was the object of their quest: an orange wooden box with a purple interior.


	2. The Boy in the Picture

The box, dusty in the afternoon sun, was lowered onto the deck of a ship by two men in a raft.

They were on the Tsavliris tugboat Atlas. A crowd had gathered, including most of the crew of Atlas, the sub crews, and a hand-wringing writer named Tomi Pierce who represented the limited partners. There was also a documentary video crew, hired by Mechner to cover his moment of glory.

Everyone crowded around the safe. In the background Mir Two was being lowered into its cradle on deck by a massive hydraulic arm. Mir One had already recovered with Mark Moran following Jordan Mechner as he bounded over to the safe like a kid on Christmas morning.

Moran waved a bottle of champagne. "Who's the best? Say it. Say it."

"You are, Mark."

Moran gave Mechner an ebullient kiss on the cheek, then popped the cork on the champagne bottle. Champagne sprayed everywhere.

Mechner stuck a cigar in his mouth. "You rolling?"

The cameraman nodded. "Rolling."

Jordan nodded to his technicians, and they set about drilling the safe's hinges. During this operation, Jordan amped the suspense, working the lens to fill the time.

"Well, here it is, the moment of truth. Here's where we find out if the time, the sweat, the money spent to charter this ship and these subs and other technological devices, to come out here to the middle of Athens, Greece...were worth it. If what we think is in that safe...is in that box...it will be."

Mechner grinned wolfishly in anticipation of his greatest find yet. The door was yanked loose. It clanged onto the deck. Mechner moved closer, peering into its interior. He dug into the safe, pulling out an ancient portfolio and handfuls of dusty paper. Nothing. He felt around the inside of the box. After long moment, his face said it all.

"Shoot." He stood up.

Moran watched him, half with sympathy, half with amusement. "You know, boss, this same thing happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered."

Mechner was too disappointed to be amused. He noticed the cameraman still filming him.

"Turn the camera off," he snapped, walking away.

* * *

Technicians were carefully removing some papers from the box and placing them in a tray of sand to separate them safely. Nearby, other artifacts from the compartments were being dusted and preserved.

Pierce was on the satellite phone with the investors. Mechner was yelling at the video crew.

"You send out what I tell you when I tell you. I'm signing your paychecks, not 60 Minutes. Now get set up for the uplink."

Pierce covered the phone and turned to Mechner. "The partners want to know how it's going?"

"How it's going? It's going like a first date in prison, what do you think?" Mechner grabbed the phone from Pierce and went instantly smooth. "Hi, Doug? Gary? Look, it wasn't in the box...no, look, don't worry about it, there're still plenty of places it could be...in the floor debris in the Britannic, in the sister's room, in the purser's safe in a baggage car from the old train..."

Pierce interjected, "Jimmy's office briefcase..."

Mechner glared at him, then noticed something the technicians had found. "Hang on a second."

A tech coaxed some letters in the dust bin to one side with a tong...revealing a conte crayon drawing of a boy.

Jordan looked closely at the drawing, which was in excellent shape, though its edges had partially disintegrated. The boy was beautiful, and beautifully rendered. In his young age or early pre-teen years, he was wearing a kimono, though posed with a kind of casual modesty. He was on an Empire divan, in a pool of light that seemed to radiate outward from his eyes. Scrawled in the lower right corner was the date: July 25, 1914. And the initials HD.

The boy was not entirely alone. At his right finger was a golden bird with large rubies hanging in the throat.

"Give me the photo of the egg!" Jordan gestured to the techs, hope lighting his eyes.

Pierce glanced at the drawing. "Looks like we might have something here."

Mechner grabbed the reference photo from the clutter on the lab table. It was a period black-and-white photo of a golden egg on a royal purple velvet jeweler's display stand. He held it next to the drawing. It was clearly the same piece, a complex setting with a massive central stone, which was almost egg-shaped.

Mechner looked at the two pictures, realizing what he had found.

"I'll be God damned."

* * *

A CNN news story could be heard in the background of the house in Ojai, a live satellite feed from the deck of the Atlas, intercut with the CNN studio.

The announcer looked at the teleprompter. "Video game designer Jordan Mechner is best known for the Prince of Persia. Now he is using naval technology to work into the mysteries of World War I at another famous site of interest...the Orient Express. He is with us live via satellite from a French tugboatin the middle of the Aegean Sea...hello Jordan?"

Jordan signaled to the film crew. "Yes, hi, Tracy. You know, Orient Express is not just A luxury train, Orient Express is THE luxury train. It's the Mount Everest of luxury trains."

The CNN report was playing on a television set in the living room of a small, rustic house. It was full of ceramics, figurines, folk art, the walls crammed with drawings and paintings, things collected over a lifetime.

A glassed-in studio was attached to the house. Outside it was a quiet morning in Ojai, California. In the studio, amid incredible clutter, an ancient man was throwing a pot on a potter's wheel. The liquid red clay covered his hands, hands that were gnarled and age-spotted, but still surprisingly strong and supple. A man in his late thirties was assisting him.

The news report continued. "I've planned this expedition for three years, and we're out here recovering some amazing things...things that will have enormous historical and educational value."

"But it's no secret that education is not your main purpose. You're a treasure hunter. So what is the treasure you're hunting?"

"I'd rather show you than tell you, and we think we're very close to doing just that. Everyone knows the stories of Orient Express—the bravery, the heroism, the band playing up to the end—but I'm interested in the untold stories, the stories locked away under the sands of time for eighty years."

The old man's name was Charlie Schultz. His face was a wrinkled mass, his body shapeless and shrunken under a one-piece African-print suit. But his eyes were just as bright and alive as those of a young boy.

Charlie got up and walked into the living room, wiping pottery clay from his hands with a rag. A Beagle dog got up and came in with his.

The younger man, Craig Schultz, rushed to help him.

Charlie walked closer to the television. "Turn that up please, dear."

As Craig turned up the sound, Charlie's eyes focused on the screen.

"Your expedition is at the center of a storm of controversy over salvage rights and even ethics. Many are calling you a grave robber."

"Nobody called the recovery of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb grave robbing. I have museum-trained experts here, making sure this stuff is preserved and catalogued properly. Look at this drawing, which was found today..."

The video camera panned off Jordan to the drawing, in a tray of water. The image of the boy with the mechanical bird filled the screen.

"...a piece of paper that's been in an abandoned sleeping car for eighty years...and my team are able to preserve it intact. Should this have remained unseen in a train yard for eternity, when we can see it and enjoy it now?"

Charlie was galvanized by this image. His mouth hung open in amazement. Squinting to see the picture more closely, he exclaimed in surprise, "I'll be damned."

* * *

The Mir submersibles were being launched. Mir Two was already in the water, and Mechner was getting ready to climb into Mir One when Tomi Pierce ran up to him.

"There's a satellite call for you."

"Tomi, we're launching. See these submersibles here, going in the water? Take a message."

"No, trust me, you want to take this call."

"This had better be good." Mechner followed Pierce back inside.

Pierce handed Mechner the phone, punching down the blinking line. "You gotta speak up. He's kind of old."

The call was from Charlie. He was in his kitchen with a mystified Craig.

"This is Jordan Mechner. What can I do for you, Mrs..."

Pierce spoke up. "Schultz. Charlie Schultz."

"Mr. Schultz."

"I was just wondering if you had found the Firebird yet, Mr. Mechner."

Jordan almost dropped the phone. Tomi saw his shocked expression.

"I told you you wanted to take the call."

Mechner spoke into the phone again.

"All right. You have my attention, Charlie. Can you tell me who the boy in the picture is?"

"Oh, yes. The boy in the picture is me."


	3. Reflections of the Past

An enormous Sea Stallion helicopter thundered across the Mediterranean Sea. The golden city of Jerusalem was at the horizon. The Atlas was visible in the distance.

Charlie's face was visible, looking out calmly.

Jordan and Moran were watching Mir 2 being swung over the side to start a dive on the dock. Moran clearly wasn't happy.

"He's a goddamned liar! Some nut case seeking money or publicity—God only knows what! Like that Russian babe, Anesthesia or that brother of hers!"

Pierce gestured to them. "They're inbound."

Jordan nodded and the three of them headed forward to meet the approaching helicopter.

Moran wasn't giving up. "Charles Brown went MIA while serving for the Ottoman Empire during World War I when he was thirteen. If he's alive, he'd be over a hundred by now."

Mechner wasn't giving up, either. "A hundred and one next month."

"Okay, so he's a very old goddamned liar. Look, I did the background on this man going back to the twenties, when he was working as an actor...and a cartoonist! There's your first clue, Sherlock! His name was Charles M. Dawson then. Then he marries a girl named Donna Schultz, they move to St Paul, Minnesota, and she punches out a couple of kids. Now Donna's dead, and from what I hear Minnesota is dead."

The Sea Stallion approached the hotel roof, forcing Jordan to yell over the rotors.

"And everyone who knows about the egg is supposed to be dead...or on this ship. But he knows!"

In a thundering down blast the helicopter's wheels bounced down the helipad.

Mechner, Pierce, and Moran watched as the helicopter crew chief handed out about ten suitcases, and then Atlas crewmen lowered Charlie to the deck in a wheelchair. Craig, ducking unnecessarily under the rotor, followed her out, carrying Andy the Beagle. The crew chief handed a puzzled Mechner a goldfish bowl with several fish in it.

The little old gentleman looked impossibly fragile amongst all the high tech gear, grungy deck crew, and gigantic equipment.

Moran shouted to Mechner.

"Doesn't exactly travel light, does he?"

* * *

Craig was unpacking Charlie's things in the small, utilitarian hotel room. Charlie was placing a number of framed photographs on the bureau, arranging them carefully next to the fishbowl. Jordan and Moran were in the doorway.

Jordan spoke up. "Is your room all right?"

Charlie smiled. "Yes. Very nice. Have you met my grandson, Craig? He takes care of me."

Craig responded. "We met up on the roof just as few minutes ago, Grandpa. Remember?"

Charlie brushed his fingers against the top of his head. "Oh, yes."

Jordan glanced at Moran. Moran rolled his eyes. Charlie finished arranging his photographs—pictures of his children and grandchildren, his late wife.

"There, that's nice. I have to have my pictures when I travel."

"Would you like anything? Is there anything I can get you?" Jordan asked.

Charlie looked up at him. "Yes. I would like to see my drawing."

Charlie looked at the drawing in its tray of sand, confronting herself across a span of eighty years. Until they could figure out the best way to preserve it, they had to keep it immersed. It swayed and rippled, almost as if alive.

Charlie's ancient eyes gazed at the drawing.

In his mind's eye, he saw a girl's hand, holding a conte crayon, deftly creating a shoulder and the shape of his hair with two efficient lines.

He looked at the boy's face in the drawing, dancing under the sand.

Once again, his memories focused on the girl's eyes, just visible over the top of a sketching pad. They looked up suddenly, right at him. Soft eyes, but fearlessly direct.

Charlie smiled, remembering. Jordan had the reference photo of the egg in his hand.

"Sultan Abdul Hamid II received a fabulous Chinese egg, as his own personal globe, which was given to him in 1872 by Tsar Alexander II, around some months after he ascended the throne. The theory goes that the egg was cursed...a miniature portrait of woman named Jasmine in a hidden locket would have one picture in the day and another picture in the night as some sort of a macabre private joke...and it became a story with Prince Ivan. The Firebird. Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond."

Charlie shook his head. "It was a dreadful, heavy thing." He pointed at the drawing. "I only held it this once."

Craig looked at the picture. "You actually believe this is you, Grandpa?"

"It is me, dear. Wasn't I a dish?"

Jordan interrupted. "I tracked it down through insurance records...an old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Do you know who the claimant was, Charlie?"

"Someone named Van Pelt, I should imagine."

"Felix Van Pelt, right. Pittsburgh steel tycoon. For a golden egg and a whistle in the form of a scarab his daughter Lucille Van Pelt bought in France for her fiancée...you...a week before she left on the Orient Express. And the claim was filed right after the war. So the egg had to have been lost in a shipwreck or a bombing." He turned to Craig. "See the date?"

Craig leaned forward, looking closely. "July 25, 1914."

Moran broke in, "If your grandfather is who he says he is, he was holding egg the day the Orient Express was hijacked and three days before the war officially started."

Jordan turned to Charlie. "And that makes you my new best friend." He went to the table across the room. "Over here are a few things we've recovered from your compartment."

Laid out on a worktable were fifty or so objects, from mundane to valuable. Charlie, shrunken in his chair, could barely see over the tabletop. With a trembling hand he lifted a tortoise shell hand mirror, inlaid with mother of pearl. He caressed it wonderingly.

"This was mine. How extraordinary! It looks the same as the last time I saw it." He turned the mirror over and looked at his ancient face in the cracked glass. "The reflection has changed a bit."

Charlie picked up an ornate art-nouveau hair comb. A jade butterfly took flight on the ebony handle of the comb. He turned it slowly, remembering. Charlie was experiencing a rush of images and emotions that had lain dormant for eight decades as handled the butterfly comb.

Mechner spoke. "Are you ready to go back to World War I?"

* * *

Moran started a computer animated graphic on the screen, which paralleled his rapid-fire narration.

"Milos Jovanovic pushes the lever forward as the locomotive makes contact with the platform and it sort of bumps along...punching holes like Morse code...dit dit dit, down the side. Now the news spreads in the other countries...and the war spills over the blockades of the Serbian border, which unfortunately the Germans use heavy artillery. In the air, as Sopwith Camel is going down, Baron Richtofen's Fokker is coming up...slow at first...and then the camel follows faster and faster until he's got his whole tail sticking up in the air, and that's a big height, maybe twenty or thirty thousand feet. Now, the planes aren't designed to deal with that kind of weight, so what happens after some heavy bullets? The Fokker crashes...right down the middle of a bridge. Skrrt! Now the Camel swings down and the Fokker falls into the water...but the weight of the crash pulls the steel arches down vertical, and then the Camel falls, heading for the bottom. The Camel bobs like a cork, floods, and finally goes under about 2:00 AM. Three days and one month after the assassination."

The animation then followed the pilot section as he floated away in a parachute. Knowing that the pilot was own dog, Charlie watched this clinical dissection of the dogfight and how the war started stoically, showing little sign of the emotions within him.

Moran continued. "The pilot pulls out of its dive and planes away on a parachute, almost a half a mile, before it hits the border of southern Yugoslavia going maybe 12 knots. Kaboom!"

The pilot impacted, digging deeply into the ground. The animation then followed the triplane.

Moran, delighted with his handiwork, grinned. "The remains of the triplane implode as it floats, from the pressure, and rips apart from the force of the river rapids as it falls from a faraway waterfall, landing like a big pile of junk. Pretty cool, huh?"

Charlie just looked at him. "Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr. Moran." Moran had the grace to look sheepish. "Of course, the experience of it was somewhat...different."

Jordan pulled out a tape recorder. "Will you share it with us, Charlie?"

His eyes went back to the screens, showing the ruins of the train cars in Athens. The image of the doors to the restaurant car appeared on one of the monitors, and Charlie looked at it, seeing in his mind's eye opening the door as well-dressed people walked about inside the brightly lit smoking room. Remembering, he could almost hear the soft violin music playing.

Abruptly, he snapped back to the present. The doors were covered with dust, enshrouded in light and darkness. Charlie put his hands over his face, gasping against other memories that flooded his mind. Craig rushed up to him.

"I'm taking him to rest." He tried to escort Charlie away.

"No." Charlie's protest was almost feeble.

"Come on, Grandpa."

"No!" The feeble old man was gone, replaced by a woman with eyes of steel. She sat down next to Mechner.

"Tell us, Charlie."

Charlie closed his eyes for a moment, then began. "It's been eighty years—"

Mechner interrupted him. "Just try to remember anything, anything at all."

"Do you want to hear this or not, Mr. Mechner?" Mechner looked at him in consternation. "It's been eighty years, and I can still smell the teak paint. The china would never be used again. The sheets would never be slept in again. Orient Express was called the Train de Luxe. And it was. It really was..."


	4. A Story Told

With time, the wrinkled, weathered landscape of age had appeared around Charlie's eyes. But the eyes themselves were the same.

"After all these years, I can still feel it closing on my hand like an anvil. I can still feel its weight. If you could have felt it, not just seen it..."

"Well, that's the general idea, my dear." Mechner was getting impatient.

"So let me get this right. You were gonna kill yourself by jumping off the rear platform of the Orient Express?" Moran guffawed. "That's great!"

Mechner spoke warningly. "Mark..."

But Charlie laughed with Moran.

Moran was still laughing. "All you had to do was wait two days!"

Mechner, standing out of Charlie's sight line, checked his watch. Hours had passed. This process was taking too long.

"Charlie, tell us more about the egg. What did Van Pelt do with it after that?"

"I'm afraid I'm feeling a little tired, Mr. Mechner."

Craig picked up the cue and started to wheel him out.

"Wait! Can you give us something to go on here? Like who had access to the safe? That ol' gal Kahina? What about this Schroeder guy? The valet. Did he have the combination?"

"That's enough." Craig spoke sharply.

Craig took Charlie out. Charlie's old hand reappeared at the doorway in a frail wave good-bye.

As the big hydraulic jib swung one of the Mir subs out over the harbor, Mechner walked as he talked with Tomi Pierce, the partners' rep. They wove among deck cranes, launch crew, and sub maintenance guys.

"The partners are pissed." Pierce looked at Mechner seriously.

"Tomi, buy me time. I need time."

"We're running thirty thousand a day, and we're six days over. I'm telling you what they're telling me. The hand is on the plug. It's starting to pull."

"Well, you tell the hand I need another two days! Tomi, Tomi, Tomi...we're close! I smell it. I smell ice. He had the egg in his hand...now we just have to find out where it wound up. I just gotta work him a bit more. Okay?"

Jordan turned and saw Craig standing behind him. He had overheard the last part of his conversation with Pierce. He went to him and hustled him away from Pierce, toward a quiet spot on the balcony. "Hey, Craig. I need to talk to you for a second."

"Don't you mean work me?"

"Look, I'm running out of time. I need your help."

"I'm not going to help you browbeat my hundred and one year old grandfather. I came down here to tell you to back off."

Jordan spoke to him with undisguised desperation. "Craig...you gotta understand something. I've bet it all to find the Firebird. I've got all my dough tied up in this thing. My wife even divorced me over this hunt. I need what's locked inside your grandpa's memory." He held out his hand. "You see this? Right here?"

He looked at his hand, palm up. Empty. Cupped, as if around an imaginary shape. "What?"

"That's the shape my hand's gonna be when I hold that thing. You understand? I'm not leaving here without it."

"Look, Jordan, he's going to do this his way, in his own time. Don't forget, he contacted you. He's out here for his own reasons, God knows what they are."

"Maybe he wants to make peace with the past."

"What past? He has never once, not once, ever said a word about being on the Orient Express until two days ago."

"Then we're all meeting your grandfather for the first time."

Craig looked at him hard. "You think he was really there?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm a believer. He was there."

* * *

Moran started the tape recorder. Charlie was gazing at the screen, seeing the archival footage from the times—a camera was moving along the platform of a train station, heading down. The rectangular windows of München Ostbahnhof marched past on the right.

"The next day, Saturday, I remember thinking how the sunlight felt." And the story began again.

* * *

Charlie blinked, seeming to come back to the present. He saw the wreck on the screen, the sad passenger car lost in the yard.

"That was the last time the Orient Express ever saw peace."

Jordan Mechner changed the tape in the mini-cassette recorder.

"So we're up to dusk on the night of the hijacking. Six hours to go."

Moran got to his feet. "Don't you love it? There's Schmidt, he's standing there with a letter to the Baron Unruh in his fucking hand..." He remembered Charlie. "...excuse me...in his hand, and he's ordering more ammunition."

Jordan looked up. "Twenty-six years of experience working against him. He figures anyone with enough power to take over the train they're going to see in time to turn. But the engine's too vulnerable, with a strong framework...it can't corner worth shit. Everything he knows is wrong."

Charlie was ignoring this conversation. He had the art-noveau comb with the jade butterfly on the handle in his hands, turning it slowly. He was watching a monitor, which showed a photograph of Kronos' palace in Vienna, Austria. Slowly, he began to speak again.

* * *

At one hundred one years old, only Charlie's eyes were the same.

"My heart was pounding the whole time. It was the most erotic moment of my life...up till then at least."

A semicircle of listeners stared in rapt, frozen silence. The story of Heather and Charlie had finally and completely grabbed them.

After a moment, Moran spoke. "What, uh...happened next?"

Charlie smiled. "You mean, did we 'do it'? Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Moran. Heather was very professional."

* * *

Inside the imaging shack on the Atlas, Charlie's ancient, wrinkled face gazed at the assembled group, who were looking at her in sorrow.

"Twenty hundred people went to war when the Archduke of Austria was killed from under us. There were twenty boats of the Turkish milita floating nearby, and only one came. One. Six were saved from the river, myself included. Six, out of twenty hundred."

As he spoke, he looked slowly across the faces of Craig and the salvage crew on Atlas. Mechner, Moran, Pierce, the others...the reality of what happened there eighty-four years before had hit them like never before. With his story, Charlie had put them on World War I in its first hours, and for the first time, they did feel like grave robbers.

Mechner, for the first time, had even forgotten to ask about the egg.

"Afterward, the thirty people in the train had nothing to do but wait...wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution which would never come."


	5. A Journey Complete

Old Charlie sat with the group in the imaging shack, lit by the blue glow of the screens. He held the hair comb with the jade butterfly on the handle in his gnarled hands.

Moran spoke to her. "We never found anything on Heather. There's no record of her at all."

"No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken of her until now, not to anyone." He turned to Craig. "Not even your grandmother. A man's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you all know there was a woman named Heather Dawson, and that she saved me, in every way that a person can be saved." He closed his eyes. "I don't even have a picture of her. She exists now only in my memory."

* * *

The flashlights of the scavenger group made their last pass over the abandoned sleeping car. They heard Yuri the dispatcher on the UQC.

"Group 1 returning to base."

The flashlights turned away, taking its light with it, leaving the sleeping car once again in its fine and private darkness.

* * *

A desultory wrap party for the expedition was in progress. There was music and some of the co-ed French crew were dancing. Moran was getting drunk in the aggressive style of August Schmidt.

Mechner stood at the dock, looking down into the black water. Craig came to him, offering him a beer. He put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry."

"We were pissing in the wind the whole time." Mechner noticed a figure move through the lights far above at the roof of the hotel. "Oh, shit."

Charlie walked through the shadows of the roof. His nightgown blew in the wind. His feet were bare. His hands were clutched at her chest, almost as if he was praying.

Jordan and Craig ran up the stairs, hauling ass.

Charlie reached the roof. His gnarled fingers wrapped over the rail. His ancient foot stepped up on the gunwale. He pushed himself up, leaning forward. Over his shoulder, the black water glinted far below.

Jordan and Craig ran up behind him.

"Grandpa, wait! Don't—"

Charlie turned his head, looking at them. He turned further, and they saw he had something on his right index finger, something he was about to drop from above.

It was the Firebird and the scarab whistle.

Mechner saw his holy grail in his hand and his eyes went wide. Charlie kept it over the side where he could drop it anytime. "Don't come any closer."

"You had it the entire time?"

In Charlie's mind's eye, he could see himself walking away from Sirkeci Station and boarding a Turkish military train. The Serbians' rifles went off into a battle behind him. He had his hands in his pockets. He stopped, feeling something, and pulled out the egg. He stared at the miniature portrait of the black haired woman in amazement, for her throat was no longer slit, but alive and well.

On the hotel roof, Charlie smiled at Jordan's incomprehension. "The hardest part about being so poor was being so rich. But every time I thought of selling it, I thought of Lucy. And somehow I always got by without her help."

He held it out over the side. Moran and a couple of the other guys came up behind Jordan, reacting to what was in Charlie's hand. "Holy shit."

"Don't drop it, Charlie."

Moran spoke in a fierce whisper. "Rush him."

Mechner turned to Moran. "It's his, you schmuck." Turning back to Charlie, he said, "Look, Charlie, I...I don't know what to say to a man who tries to jump off the Orient Express when it's not being riddled with bullets or explosions, and jumps back onto it when it is...we're not dealing with logic here, I know that...but please...think about this a second."

"I have. I came all the way here so this could go back where it belongs."

The massive bird glittered. Jordan edged closer and held out his hand. "Just let me hold it in my hand, Charlie. Please. Just once."

He came closer to him. It was reminiscent of Heather slowly moving up to him at the rear platform of the Orient Express.

Surprisingly, he calmly placed the massive stone in the palm of his hand, while still holding onto the bird. Jordan gazed at the object of his quest. An infinity of cold scalpels glinted in its red and gold depths. It was mesmerizing. It fit in his finger just like he imagined.

"My God." His grip tightened on the great bird.

He looked up, meeting his gaze. His eyes were suddenly infinitely wise and deep.

"You look for treasure in the wrong place, Mr. Mechner. Only life is priceless, and making each day count."

His fingers relaxed. He opened them slowly. Gently, he slipped the Firebird out of his hand. He felt it sliding away.

Then, with an impish little grin, Charlie blew the scarab whistle and the Firebird flew out of his finger. Moran gave a strangled cry and rushed to the side in time to see it grab the whistle out of Charlie's left hand with its claws and disappear forever into an ever widening gyre.

"Aw! That really sucks, man!"

Jordan Mechner went through ten changes before he settled on a reaction...he laughed. He laughed until the tears came to his eyes. Then he turned to Craig. "Would you like to dance?"

Craig grinned at him and nodded. Charlie smiled. He looked up at the stars.

In the black sky, the bird flew, twinkling end over end, into the infinite depths.

* * *

On Charlie's shelf of carefully arranged pictures: Charlie as a young actor in California, radiant...a theatrically lit studio publicity shot...Charlie and his wife, with their two children...Charlie with his son at his college graduation...Charlie with his children and grandchildren at his seventieth birthday. A collage of images of a life lived well.

One picture in particular stood out. Charlie, circa 1920. He was at the beach, sitting on a horse at the surf line. The Santa Monica pier, with its roller coaster, was behind her. He was grinning, full of life.

Charlie himself lay warm in his bunk. He was very still. He could be sleeping, or maybe something else.

* * *

_Blackness._

_The Orient Express under a heavy snow bank loomed like a ghost out of the dark. It was lit by a kind of moonlight, a light of the mind. He passed over the endless snow into the sleeping car, moving faster than subs could move...almost like he was flying._

_He went inside, and the echoing sound of distant waltz music was heard. The dust faded away from the walls of the dark corridor, and it was transformed. He emerged into the grand throne room of the Alexander Palace, lit by glowing chandeliers. The music was vibrant now, and the room was populated by men in tie and tails, women in gowns. It was exquisitely beautiful._

_He swept down the hall. The crowd of beautiful gentlemen and ladies turned as he descended toward them. At the bottom a girl stood with her back to hi...she turned, and it was Heather. Smiling, she held her hand out toward him._

_Charlie went into her arms, a boy of thirteen. The passengers and crew of the Orient Express smiled and applauded in the utter silence of the abyss._

_Then he called out, "Snoopy! It's suppertime!" _

_In a flash, his pet beagle came running up to him and licked him in the face._

* * *

Snoopy woke up to hear his owner calling his name, he jumped out of his doghouse and greeted the boy with a salute.

"Why can't I have a normal dog like everyone else?" the boy moaned.

"Just lucky I guess." His dog replied for the first time.

And then Charlie Brown knew that everything was going to be the same.

The End


End file.
